If you live near a baseball card shop be sure to ask them if they are participating in the 2011 Panini Black Friday Promotion. Select dealers will be given quantities of packs that will be given away to collectors during the 2011 holiday shopping season. Randomly inserted into 2011 Panini Black Friday packs will be autographs of some of the biggest stars in NHL, NBA and the NFL. You'll also get a sneak peak at the upcoming baseball products by Panini which includes 2011 Donruss Elite Baseball. Hobby shop owners are encouraged to give the packs away to customers who purchase packs at the store on Black Friday or during the shopping season. If you are a store owner and would like to participate email Rodney Alsup at
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The goal for Panini is to create a wrapper redemption program similar to those found at big card shows such as The National and the Toronto Fall Expo. You can be sure that many of the cards will end up on eBay - probably well before Black Friday because dealers will open them and re-sell the cards. Sports Card Radio will update the Black Friday checklist and information for the insert and autograph sets as information becomes available.

Something new for collectors who enjoy Topps Allen & Ginter baseball cards is an exclusive factory set limited to just 999 total sets. Instead of the traditional matted finish of Allen & Ginter cards - these cards from the exclusive factory set will have a glossy finish to make them very unique. In addition to the 350 cards from the 2011 Allen & Ginter base set - Topps is throwing in 10 exclusive brand new rookie cards not found in the original set. Every card in the set is also serial numbered to /999.

The 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter Baseball Glossy Factory set is available online at the ShopTopps website for $99.99. Many of the single cards will be sold online - specifically eBay - as sellers will probably break up many of the sets and sell the cards individually.

These should be somewhat desirable cards because they are serial numbered /999 and many collectors will be trying to get the players they are after. $99.99 seems like a fair price if you are looking to sell the cards individually or keep the set complete to hold for future value. The per card price is only about $0.30 cents per card after shipping costs. Sending these cards in to Check Out My Cards or selling them on eBay is perhaps a viable option.

In addition to the 350 card base set from Allen & Ginter - you'll also get 10 exclusive cards that are only available in the high gloss factory set. Several of these cards could be quite hot when these cards go live - specifically the Eric Hosmer and Dustin Ackley. Check the links below to see if anyone has these cards for sale on eBay.

Panini went all out in the design and execution of the HRX Video Trading Cards found inside 2010-11 Totally Certified Basketball and fans of Kobe Bryant are paying huge money to get this stunning card. The Bryant version comes complete with a lengthy video that contains highlights of Kobe's illustrious career and a sit down interview with the Laker star himself. Toward the end of the video they actually show Kobe signing the card and serial numbering each of them himself. Many other Kobe autograph cards found inside Panini products are also displayed. Ever the business man - Kobe checks an incoming phone call during the video that could have ended up on the blooper reel.

10-11 Totally Certified Basketball released on July 6, 2011 - and so far - this is the only product to contain the HRX Video Trading Cards. The other players who also have an HRX Card are John Wall, Kevin Durant and Blake Griffin. Kobe's version is certainly the most sought after and on August 21, 2011 one sold for $1,425 on eBay. On Aug. 26 a Blake Griffin version sold for $420.00. Inside packs of 10-11 Certified Basketball are randomly inserted HRX redemption cards that have to be sent in. The turnaround time was quick as collectors who redeemed in July already had their card by August.

Topps released a special 5 card set of 2011 Topps Heritage Rookie Cards at the 2011 National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago, IL - August 3-7. Collectors who opened five packs of 2011 Topps or Bowman cards at the Topps booth received a special Heritage rookie card. The 5 Heritage Rookie Cards shown below are all serial numbered to #/299 on the back of the card. On each day of the NSCC show, Topps gave away a different player to collectors and you can see the release date of the specific cards listed below. If you couldn't make it out to the National Convention - have no fear - many have showed up on eBay and if you shop around you can usually find one for a good price.